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Anyone who has seen “The Devil Wears Prada” has heard that name being repeated countless times by Miranda Priestly in her office. Patrick Demarchelier is one of the world’s foremost fashion photographers, hee has created iconic portraits and photographed covers and campaigns for many influential publications and fashion houses.

Born in 1943, he was raised in the small town of La Havre, near Paris, by his mother. His love of photography began aged 17 when he was given his first camera by his stepfather and began to take pictures. Aged 20 he moved to Paris and began working for a photography lab, printing newspaper photographs. He later became assistant to a photographer who shot film magazine covers, before moving on to work at a finishing school doing test shots and eventually becoming assistant to Hans Feurer, a photographer who worked with Vogue.

He has no formal qualifications, instead he claims he has learned from his mistakes: “I learned most by just taking pictures; a lot of pictures. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but it’s often from your mistakes that you learn most. Being a photographer is like being an athlete, You must practice every day.”

“I shoot each person in different lighting,” he says. “I look at the face to get the correct lighting; one type of lighting will work for one person and not another. Lighting helps to bring the character out.”

In 1989 he became the personal photographer of Diana, Princess of Wales, who contacted him after seeing one of his photographs on the cover of Vogue. “I remember when she first contacted me. I had done a picture for Vogue in which a model was opening her coat to show a picture of a little, laughing boy tucked into the inside pocket. The boy was, in fact, my son, and Diana, maybe because of her little boys, loved that picture so much that she got in touch. We became friends, she was funny and kind – but fundamentally she was a very simple woman who liked very simple things,” he told the Telegraph in 2008. He was the first ever non-British official photographer to the Royal family.

“The camera helps you decide what you want to do — each gives you a different feeling,” the photographer says.” Using a certain camera depends on the situation, especially the lighting — indoor with strobes, for instance, or outside in daylight — and on the subject. It’s all a matter of preference.”

One of the lessons gleaned from his long career, he adds, is that fashion has a goldfish memory: “Things change. Then, after a while, they come back. So things get longer and longer and longer. And then they get shorter and shorter and shorter. And at the fashion shows, people say, ‘Ah! Fantastique!’ – but things were like that 10 years ago; they go around. Only amazing designers think of the truly new.”